Shirt Stains: Origin And Morty

Do you have certain bands in your life that you know exactly when, where, and how you discovered them? I have lots of those. I don’t know if it’s due to a good memory for minor things or my brain just pushes out important things like people’s names to make room for stuff like this. Regardless, Origin is one of those bands.

I was a DJ at my college’s radio station. My junior year, I had a slot from 12am-3am on Fridays. Not exactly the best time, but it allowed me to play whatever I wanted and metalheads tend to be up during those hours. I did not have a laptop or a fancy mp3 player, so I would bring in piles of my own cds and try to dig through the shelf and a half of metal that the studio had. It was slim pickings, but one album that stuck out to me was Origin’s Echoes of Decimation.

I’m not sure what it was about the album that made it stand out. Maybe it was the simplicity of the band’s name. Maybe it was that they were on Relapse Records, instantly gaining a level of credibility. Maybe it was the giant Arnim Zola-like face on the album art. Maybe it was just the brutal blast of death metal at 2 in the morning that I needed. Regardless, I’ll always associate the band and that album with fun times in college. Well, I used to associate it with those times until I saw…this.

*disappointed sigh*

Gone is old man Apocalypse’s smushed face. In it’s place is the misshapen corn nut-like visage of a Cromulon from Rick and Morty. Look, I don’t watch the show. I sat through about five minutes of the first episode after it came up on Hulu’s autoplay. No laughs, no chuckles, didn’t even crack a smile. It’s possible I just don’t “have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty“. It’s also possible I don’t particularly find alcoholism being used as a comedic device particularly funny. It’s definite that I don’t like the nuttierfringes of the show’s fanbase.

So why does Origin have one of the characters from the show on their shirt? I don’t know. I would have to assume that they enjoy it or they at least want to cash in on a fandom that would step over their own mother’s to get tiny packets of sauce because the show mentioned it. I think I’d actually be really okay with this shirt if that was the case. I mean, I’m still annoyed that this shirt made me actually search around the internet to confirm that this was in fact a character from the show. Time not well spent.

Is that supposed to be the giant floating head’s asshole? Y’know what? I don’t want to know. I’m more than okay not knowing. Some things are better left unlearned, like trigonometry or your parents’ fetishes. Just try not to hop around on our counters and throw a fit.

And lest you think this is some wacky bootleg cobbled together by the shadiest of Facebook pages, this shirt was sold via IndieMerch.com. I say “was” because it is no longer available. I hope that’s because people wanted to avoid being sued and not because a bunch of people bought it and it sold out. I don’t know if my heart can handle that news.